“Now if Christ be preached that
He rose from the dead, how say some
among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?
But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen:
and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith
is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we
have testified of God that
He raised up Christ:
Whom
He raised not up,
if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not
Christ raised: and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are
yet in your sins.
Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in
this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most
miserable.” – 1 Corinthians xv. 12-19.

OUR
religion is not based upon opinions, but upon facts.
We hear persons sometimes saying, “Those are your views, and
these are ours.” Whatever your “views” may be, is a small
matter; what are the facts of the case?
We must, after all, if we want a firm foundation, come down to
matters of fact. Now, the great facts of the gospel are that God
was incarnate in Christ Jesus, that He lived here a life of
holiness and love, that He died upon the cross for our sins,
that He was buried in the tomb of Joseph, that the third day He
rose again from the dead, that after a while He ascended to His
Father’s throne where He now sitteth, and that He shall come
by-and-by, to be our Judge, and in that day the dead in Christ
shall rise by virtue of their union with Him.

Now, very soon, within the Church of God, there rose up persons
who began to dispute about the fundamental and cardinal
principles of the faith, and it is so even now. When those
outside the Church deny that Christ is the Son of God, deny His
atoning sacrifice, and deny His resurrection, we are not at all
astonished; they are unbelievers, and they are acting out their
own profession. But when men, inside the Church of God, call
themselves Christians, and yet deny the resurrection of the
dead, then is our soul stirred within us, for it is a most
solemn and serious evil to doubt those holy truths. They know
not what they do, they cannot see all the result of their
unbelief; if they could, one would think that they would start
back with horror, and replace the truth, and let it stand where
it ought to stand, where God has put it.

The resurrection of the dead has been assailed, and is assailed
still, by those who are called Christians, even by those who are
called Christian ministers, but who, nevertheless, spirit away
the very idea of the resurrection of the dead, so that we are
to-day in the same condition, to some extent, as the Corinthian
church was when, in its very midst, there rose up men,
professing to be followers of Christ, who said that there was no
resurrection of the dead. The apostle Paul, having borne his
witness, and recapitulated the testimony about the resurrection
of Christ, goes on to show the horrible consequences which must
follow if there be no resurrection of the dead, and if Christ be
not risen. He showed this to be a foundation truth; and if it
was taken away, much more was gone than they supposed; indeed,
everything was gone, as Paul went on to prove.

Beloved friends, let us never tamper with the truth of God. I
find it as much as I can do to enjoy the comfort of the truth,
and to learn the spiritual lessons of God’s Word, without
setting up to be a critic upon it; and I find it immeasurably
more profitable to my own soul believingly to adore, than
unbelievingly to invent objections, or even industriously to try
to meet them. The meeting of objections is an endless work. When
you have killed one regiment of them, there is another regiment
coming on; and when you have put to the sword whole legions of
doubts, doubters still swarm upon you like the frogs of Egypt.
It is a poor business, it answers no practical end; it is better
far firmly to believe what you profess to believe, and to follow
out to all the blessed consequences every one of the truths
which, in your own heart and soul, you have received of the
Lord.

One of the truths most surely believed among us is that there
will be a resurrection of all those who sleep in Christ. There
will be a resurrection of the ungodly as well as of the godly.
Our Lord Jesus said to the Jews, “Verily, verily, I say unto
you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear
the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.
For as the Father hath life in Himself; so hath He given to the
Son to have life in Himself; and hath given Him authority to
execute judgment also, because He is the Son of man.
Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all
that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come
forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life;
and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of
damnation.” Paul declared before Felix the doctrine of the
“resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust;” but his
argument with the Corinthians specially referred to believers,
who will rise from the dead, and stand with Christ in the day of
His appearing, quickened with the life that quickened Him, and
raised up to share the glory which the Father has given to Him.

I. Paul’s argument begins here, and this will be our first head,
IF THERE BE NO RESURRECTION, CHRIST IS NOT RISEN.

If the resurrection of the dead is
impossible, Christ cannot have risen from the dead. Now,
the apostles bore witness that Christ had risen. They had met Him,
they had been with Him, they had seen Him eat a piece of a
broiled fish and of a honeycomb on one occasion. They had seen
Him perform acts which could not be performed by a spirit, but
which needed that He should be flesh and bones.
Indeed, He said, “A spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see
Me have.” One of them put his finger into the print of the
nails, and was invited to thrust his hand into Christ’s side.
He was known by two of them in the breaking of bread, a familiar
token by which they recognized Him better than by anything else.
They heard Him speak, they knew the tones of His voice; they
were not deceived. On one occasion, five hundred of them saw Him
at once; or, if there was any possibility of a mistake when they
were all together, they were not deceived when they saw Him one
by one, and entered into very close personal communion with Him,
each one after a different sort.
“Now,” says Paul, “ if there be no resurrection of the dead, if
that is impossible, then, of course, Christ did not rise; and
yet we all assure you that we saw Him, and that we were with
Him, and you have to believe that we are all liars, and that the
Christian religion is a lie, or else you must believe that there
is a resurrection of the dead.”

“But,” says one, “Christ might rise,
and yet not His people.” Not so, according to our faith and firm
belief, Christ is one with
His people.
When Adam sinned, the whole human race fell in him, for they
were one with him; in Adam all died. Even those that have not
sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression have,
nevertheless, died. Even upon infants the death-sentence has
taken effect, because they were one with Adam. There is no
separating Adam from his posterity. Now, Christ is the second
Adam, and He has a posterity. All believers are one with Him,
and none can separate them from Him. If they do not live, then
He did not live; and if He did not rise, then they will not
rise. But whatever happened unto Him must also happen unto them.
They are so welded together, the Head and the members, that
there is no dividing them. If He had slept an eternal sleep,
then every righteous soul would have done the same, too. If He
rose again, they must rise again, for He has taken them unto
Himself to be part and parcel of His very being. He died that
they might live. Because He lives they shall live also, and in
His eternal life they must for ever be partakers.

This is Paul’s first argument, then, for the resurrection of the
righteous, that, inasmuch as Christ rose, they must rise, for
they are identified with Him.

II. But now he proceeds with his subject, not so much arguing
upon the resurrection of others as upon the resurrection of
Christ; and his next argument is, that,
IF THERE BE NO RESURRECTION, APOSTOLIC PREACHING FALLS:
“If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain “ (see the
fourteenth verse). “ Yea, and we are found false witnesses of
God; because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ:
Whom He raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not.”

If
Christ was not raised, the apostles were false witnesses.
When a man bears false witness, he usually has a motive for
doing so. What motive had these men, what did they gain by
bearing false witness to Christ’s resurrection? It was all loss
and no profit to them if He had not risen. They declared in
Jerusalem that He had risen from the dead, and straightway men
began to hale them to prison, and to put them to death. Those of
them who survived bore the same testimony. They were so full of
the conviction of it, that they went into distant countries to
tell the story of Jesus and His resurrection from the dead. Some
went to Rome, some to Spain; probably some came even to this
remote island of Britain. Wherever they went, they testified
that Christ had risen from the dead, and that they had seen Him
alive, and that He was the Saviour of all who trusted in Him.
Thus they always preached, and what became of them?
I may say, with Paul, that “they were stoned, they were sawn
asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered
about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted,
tormented.”
They were brought before the Roman Emperor again and again, and
before the pro-consuls, and threatened with the most painful of
deaths; but not one of them ever withdrew his testimony
concerning Christ’s resurrection. They still stood to it, that
they had known Him in life, many of them had been near Him in
death, and they had all communed with Him after his
resurrection. They declared that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son
of God, that He died and was buried, that He rose again, and
that there was salvation for all who believed in Him.

Were these men false witnesses? If so, they were the most
extraordinary false witnesses who ever lived. What were their
morals? What kind of men were they? Were they drunkards? Were
they adulterers? Were they thieves? Nay; they were the purest
and best of mankind; their adversaries could bring no charge
against their moral conduct. They were eminently honest, and
they spoke with the accent of conviction. As I have already
said, they suffered for their testimony. Now, under the law, the
witness of two men was to be received; but what shall we say of
the witness of five hundred men? If it was true when they first
declared that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, it is equally
true now. It does not matter though the event happened nearly
nineteen hundred years ago; it is just as true now. The apostles
bore witness which could not be gainsaid, and so it still
stands. We cannot assume that all these apostolic men were false
witnesses of God.

If we even suppose that they were
mistaken about this matter,
we must suspect their
witness about everything else; and the only logical result
is to give up the New Testament altogether. If they were
mistaken as to Christ having risen from the dead, they are not
credible witnesses upon anything else; and if they are
discredited, the whole of our religion falls with them; the
Christian faith, and especially all that the apostles built on
the resurrection, must be turned out of doors as altogether a
delusion. They taught that Christ’s rising from the dead was the
evidence that His sacrifice was accepted, that He rose again for
our justification, that His rising again was the hope of
believers in this life, and the assurance of the resurrection of
their bodies in the life to come. You must give up all your hope
of salvation the moment you doubt the Lord’s rising from the
dead.

As for Paul, who puts himself with the rest of the apostles, and
says, “If Christ be not risen, we are found false witnesses of
God,” I venture to bring him forward as a solitary witness of
the most convincing kind.
I need not remind you how he was at first opposed to Christ. He
was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, one of the most intolerant
members of the sect that hated the very name of Christ. He had a
righteousness that surpassed that of the men of his times. He
was a religious leader and persecutor; and yet he was so
convinced of the appearance of Christ to him on the way to
Damascus, that from that time he was completely turned round,
and he preached with burning zeal the faith which once he
blasphemed. There is an honesty about Paul which convinces at
once; and if he had not seen the Saviour risen from the dead, he
would not have been the man to say that he did. Dear brethren,
you may rest assured that Jesus Christ did rise from the dead.
You cannot put down these good men as impostors; you cannot
reckon the apostle Paul among those readily deceived, or among
the deceivers of others; so you may be sure that Jesus Christ
did rise from the dead, according to the Scriptures.

III. Once more, Paul’s argument is that,
IF THERE BE NO RESURRECTION, FAITH BECOMES DELUSION.

As we have to give up the apostles
and all their teaching, if Christ did not rise from the dead, so
we must conclude that
their hearers believed a lie: “your faith is also vain.”
Beloved, I speak to you who have believed in the Lord Jesus
Christ, and who are resting in Him with great comfort and peace
of mind, yea, who have experienced a great change of heart, and
a great change in your lives through faith in Christ. Now, if He
did not rise from the dead, you are believing a lie. Take this
home to yourselves: if He did not literally rise from the dead
on the third day, this faith of yours, that gives you comfort,
this faith which has renewed you in heart and life, this faith
which you believe is leading you home to heaven, must be
abandoned as a sheer delusion; your faith is fixed on a
falsehood. Oh, dreadful inference! But the inference is clearly
true if Christ is not risen; you are risking your soul on a
falsehood if Christ did not rise from the dead. This is a solemn
statement.
I said last Sabbath, and I repeat it, –

“Upon a life I did not live,

Upon a death I did not die,

I risk my whole eternity.”

It is so. If Jesus Christ did not die for me, and did not rise
again for me, I am lost; I have not a ray of comfort from any
other direction; I have no dependence on anything else but Jesus
crucified and risen; and if that sheet-anchor fails, everything
fails with it, in my case; and so it must in yours.

“Your faith is also vain,” wrote Paul
to the Corinthians, for,
if Christ is not risen, the trial will be too great for faith to
endure, since it has for the very keystone of the arch the
resurrection of Christ from the dead.
If He did not rise, your faith rests on what never happened, and
is not true; and certainly your faith will not bear that, or any
other trial. There comes to the believer, every now and then, a
time of great testing. Did you ever lie, as I have done several
times, upon the brink of eternity, full of pain, almost over the
border of this world, fronting eternity, looking into the dread
abyss? There, unless you are sure about the foundation of your
faith, you are in an evil case indeed. Unless you have a solid
rock beneath you then, your hope will shrink away to nothing,
and your confidence will depart.

When you are sure that “the Lord is risen, indeed,” then you
feel that there is something beneath your foot that does not
stir.
If Jesus died for you, and Jesus rose for you, then, my dear
brother, you are not afraid even of that tremendous day when the
earth shall be burned up, and the elements shall melt with
fervent heat. You feel a confidence that will bear even that
test. If Christ did not rise from the dead, and you are resting
your soul on the belief that He did rise, what a failure it will
be for you in another world, what disappointment when you do not
wake up in His likeness, what dismay if there should be no
pardon of sin, no salvation through the precious blood! If
Christ is not risen, your faith is vain. If it is vain, give it
up; do not hold on to a thing that is not true. I would sooner
plunge into the water, and swim or wade through the river, than
I would trust myself to a rotten bridge that would break down in
the middle. If Christ did not rise, do not trust Him, for such
faith is vain; but, if you believe that He did die for you, and
did rise again for you, then believe in Him, joyously confident
that such a fact as this affords a solid basis for your belief.

IV. Now I am going to advance a little further.
Paul says next that,
IF THERE BE NO RESURRECTION, THEY REMAINED IN THEIR SINS:
“If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your
sins.”

Ah! can ye bear that thought, my beloved in Christ, that ye are
yet in your sins? I think that the bare suggestion takes hold
upon you, terrifies you, and chills your blood. A little while
ago, you were in your sins, dead in them, covered with them as
with a crimson robe, you were condemned, lost. But now, you
believe that Christ has brought you out of your sins, and washed
you and made you white in His precious blood; ay, and has so
changed you that sin shall not have dominion over you, for now
you are by grace a child of God. Well, but, if Christ did not
rise again, you are yet in your sins.

Observe that; for
then there is no atonement
made; at least, no satisfactory atonement. If the atonement
of Christ for sin had been unsatisfactory, He would have
remained in the grave. He went there on our behalf, a hostage
for us; and if what He did upon the tree had not satisfied the
justice of God, then He would never have come out of the grave
again. Think for a minute what our position would be, if I stood
here to preach only a dead and buried Christ! He died nearly
nineteen hundred years ago; but suppose He had never been heard
of since. If He had not risen from the dead, could you have
confidence in Him? You would say, “How do we know that
His sacrifice was accepted?” We sing right truly, –

“If Jesus ne’er had paid the debt,

He ne’er had been at freedom set.”

The Surety would have been under bonds unless He had discharged
all his liability; but He has done so, and He has risen from the
dead, –

“And now both the Surety and sinner are free.”

Understand clearly what I am saying. The Lord Jesus Christ, the
Son of God, took upon Himself the sum total of the guilt of all
His people.
“The Lord hath made to meet upon Him the iniquity of us all.”
He died, and by His death obtained the full discharge of all our
obligations. But His rising again was, so to speak, the receipt
in full, the token that He had discharged the whole of the dread
liabilities which He had taken upon himself; and now, since
Christ is risen, you who believe in Him are not in your sins.
But, if He had not risen, then it would have been true, “Ye are
yet in your sins.”

It would have been true, also, in another sense. The life by which true believers live
is the resurrection-life of Him who said, “Because I live, ye
shall live also.” But if Christ is not risen, there is no life for those who are in Him.
If He were still slumbering in the grave, where would have been
the life that now makes us joyful, and makes us aspire after
heavenly things? There would have been no life for you if there
had not first been life for Him.
“Now is Christ risen from the dead,” and in Him you rise into
newness of life; but, if He did not rise, you are still dead,
still under sin, still without the divine life, still without
the life immortal and eternal that is to be your life in heaven
throughout eternity.

So, you see, once more, the consequences that follow: “If Christ
be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.”

V. Now follows, if possible, a still more terrible consequence.
IF THERE BE NO RESURRECTION, ALL THE PIOUS DEAD HAVE PERISHED:
“Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.”
“Perished”, by which is not meant “annihilated”; they are in a
worse condition than that.

One phrase must be explained by the
other which went before it;
if Jesus Christ is not
risen, they are yet in their sins. They died, and they told
us that they were blood-washed and forgiven; and that they hoped
to see the face of God with joy; but if Christ rose not from the
dead, there is no sinner who has gone to heaven, there is no
saint who ever died, who has had any real hope; he has died
under a delusion, and he has perished.

If Jesus Christ be not raised, the
godly dead are yet in their sins, and
they can never rise;
for, if Christ did not rise from the dead, they cannot rise from
the dead. Only through His resurrection is there resurrection
for the saints. The ungodly shall rise to shame and everlasting
contempt; but believers shall rise into eternal life and
felicity because of their oneness with Christ; but, if He did
not rise, they cannot rise. If He is dead, they must be dead,
for they must share with Him. They are, they ever must be, one
with Him; and all the saints who ever died, died under a mistake
if Christ did not rise. We cast away the thought with
abhorrence. Many of us have had beloved parents and friends who
have died in the Lord, and we know that the full assurance of
their faith was no mistake. We have seen dear children die in
sure and certain hope of a glorious resurrection; and we know
that it was no error on their part. I have stood by many
death-beds of believers, many triumphant, and many more peaceful
and calm as a sweet summer evening. They were not mistaken. No,
dear sirs, believing in Christ, Who lived, and died, and rose
again, they had confidence in the midst of pain, and joy in the
hour of their departure. We cannot believe that they were
mistaken; therefore we are confident that Jesus Christ did rise
from the dead.

VI. Once more,
IF THERE BE NO RESURRECTION, OUR SOURCE OF JOY IS GONE.
If Jesus did not rise from the dead, we, who believe that He
did, are of all men the most miserable: “If in this life only we
have hope in Christ,” and we certainly have no hope of any other
life, apart from Christ, “we are of all men most miserable.”

What does Paul mean? That Christian men are more miserable than
others, if they are mistaken? No, he does not mean that; for
even the mistake, if it be a mistake, gives them joy; the error,
if it be an error, yields them a present confidence and peace.
But supposing they are sure that they are under an error, that
they have made a mistake, their comfort is gone, and they are of
all men the most miserable.

Believers have given up
sensuous joys; they have sedulously given them up; they find
no comfort in them. There are a thousand things in which
worldlings find a kind of joy, all of which the Christian
loathes. Well, if you have given up the brown bread, and cannot
eat the white, then are you starved indeed. If we consider the
mirth of the worldling to be no better than the husks of swine,
and there be no bread for us, in the fact that Christ rose from
the dead, then we are hungry indeed.

And, more than that,
we have now learned
superior things. We have learned to love holiness, and we
seek after it. We have learned to love communion with God, and
it has become our heaven to talk with our Father and our
Saviour. We now look after things which are spiritual; and we
try to handle the things that are carnal as they should be
handled, as things to be used, but not abused. Now if, after
having tasted these superior joys, they all turn out to be
nothing, and they must turn out to be nothing if Jesus did not
rise from the dead, then we are indeed of all men the most
miserable.

More than that,
we have had high hopes, hopes that have made our hearts leap for
joy.
We have been ready sometimes to go straight away out of the
body, with high delights and raptures, in the expectation of
being “with Christ, which is far better.” We have said, “Though
after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I
see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall
behold, and not another.” We have been transported with the full
conviction that our eyes “shall see the King in His beauty: they
shall behold the land that is very far off;” and if that be not
sure, if it can be proved that our hopes are vain, then are we
of all men the most miserable.

You will wonder why I have been so long in bringing out these
points, and what I am driving at. Well, what I am driving at is
this. After all, everything hinges upon a fact, an ancient fact,
and if that fact is not a fact, it is all up with us. If Jesus
Christ did not rise from the dead, then his gospel is all
exploded. What I want you to notice is this, that there must be
a basis of fact in our religion; these things must be facts, or
else nothing can give us consolation.

Our eternal hopes do not depend upon our moral condition; for,
observe, these men in Corinth would not have been better or
worse if Christ had not risen from the dead. Their character was
just the same. It had been fashioned, it is true, by a belief
that He did rise from the dead; but whether He did or did not,
they were just the same men, so that their hope did not depend
upon their good moral condition.
The apostle does not say, “If you are or are not in such and
such a moral condition,” but, “If Christ be not raised, your
faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.”
So, my beloved, the reason of your being safe will be that
Christ died for you, and that He rose again; it is not the
result of what you are, but of what He did. The hinge of it all
is not in you: it is in Him, and you are to place your reliance,
not upon what you are, or hope to be, but wholly and entirely
upon a great fact which transpired nearly nineteen hundred years
ago.
If He did not rise from the dead, you are in your sins still, be
you as good as you may; but if He did rise from the dead, and
you are one with Him, you are not in your sins; they are all put
away, and you are “accepted in the Beloved.”

Now I go a step further. The great hope you have does not hinge
even upon your spiritual state. You must be born again; you must
have a new heart and a right spirit, or else you cannot lay hold
of Christ, and He is not yours; but still, your ultimate hope is
not in what you are spiritually, but in what He is.
When darkness comes over your soul, and you say, “I am afraid I
am not converted,” still believe in Him who rose from the dead;
and when, after you have had a sight of yourself, you are
drifting away to dark despair, still cling to Him who loved you,
and gave Himself for you, and rose again from the dead for you.
If thou believest that Christ is risen from the dead, and if
this be the foundation of thy hope of heaven, that hope stands
just as sure, whether thou art bright or whether thou art dull,
whether thou canst sing or whether thou art forced to sigh,
whether though canst run or whether thou art a broken-legged
cripple, only able to lie at Christ’s feet. If He died for thee,
and rose again for thee, there is the groundwork of thy
confidence, and I pray thee keep to it. Do you see how Paul
insists upon this?
“If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your
sins.” The inference is that, if Christ be
raised, and you have faith in Him, your faith is not vain, and
you are not in your sins, you are saved. Your hope must not be
here, in what your hands can do, but there, on yonder cross, in
what He did, and there, on yonder throne, in Him Who has risen
again for yourjustification.

The hardest thing in the world seems to be to keep people to
this truth, for I have noticed that much of the modern-thought
doctrine is nothing but old self-righteousness tricked out
again. It is bidding men still to trust in themselves, to trust
in their moral character, to trust in their spiritual
aspirations, or something or other.
I stand here to-night to say to you that the basis of your hope
is not even your own faith, much less your own good works; but
it is what Christ has done once for all, for “ye are complete in
Him,” and you can never be complete in any other way.

Here, again, I would have you notice that Paul does not say that
your being forgiven and saved depends upon your sincerity and
your earnestness. You must be sincere and earnest; Christ is not
yours if you are not; but still, you may be very sincere, and
very earnest, and yet be wrong all the while; and the more
sincere and earnest you are in a wrong way, the further you will
go astray. The self-righteous man maybe very sincere as he goes
about to establish a righteousness of his own; but the more he
does it, the more he ruins himself. But here is the mark for you
to aim at, not at your sincerity, though there must be that; but
if Christ was raised, and that is where you are resting your
hopes, then you are not in your sins, but you are accepted in
Christ, and justified in Him.

This is where I stand, and I pray every believer to keep here.
There are many new discoveries made in science; we are pleased
to hear it. I hope that we shall be able to travel more quickly,
and pay less for it. I hope that we shall have better light, and
that it will not be so expensive. The more true science, the
better; but when science comes in to tell me that it has
discovered anything about the way to heaven, then I have a deaf
ear to it.
“If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your
faith is also vain; ye are yet in your sins.”
But if Christ be risen, then I know where I am. If it be really
so, that He is God in human flesh; if He took my sin, and bore
the consequences of it, and made a clear sweep of it from before
the judgment-seat of the Most High; and if His rising again is
God’s testimony that the work is done, and that Christ, who
stood as Substitute for me, is accepted for me, oh, hallelujah,
hallelujah! What more do I need, but to praise and bless the
name of Him who has saved me with an effectual salvation? Now
will I work for Him. Now will I spend and be spent in His
service. Now will I hate every false way, and every sin, and
seek after purity and holiness; but not, in any sense, as the
groundwork of my confidence. My one hope for time and eternity
is Jesus, only Jesus; Jesus crucified and risen from the dead.

I do not know any passage of Scripture which, more thoroughly
than this one, throws the stress where the stress must be, not
on man, but on Christ alone: “If there be no resurrection of the
dead, then is Christ not risen: and if Christ be not risen, then
is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.” O dear
hearer, if thou wouldst be saved, thy salvation does not lie
with thyself, but with Him who left His Father’s bosom, and came
down to earth a babe at Bethlehem, and hung upon a woman’s
breast; upon Him Who lived here, for thirty-three years, a life
of suffering and of toil, and Who then took all the sin of His
people upon Himself, carried it up to the tree, and there bore
all the consequences of it in His own body, –

“Bore all that Almighty God could bear,

With strength enough, but none to spare.”

Jesus Christ bore that which has made God’s pardon an act of
justice, and vindicated His forgiveness of sin so that none can
say that He is unjust when He passes by transgression.
Christ did all that; and then, dying, was laid in the tomb, but,
the third day, His Father raised Him from the dead in token that
He spoke the truth when He said, on the cross, “It is finished.”
The debt is paid now; then, O sinner, leave thy prison, for thy
debt is paid! Art thou shut up in despair on account of thy debt
of sin? It is all discharged if thou hast believed in Him who
was raised from the dead. He has taken all thy sin, and thou art
free. That handwriting of ordinances that was against thee is
nailed to His cross. Go thy way, and sing, “The Lord is
risen indeed,” and be as happy as all the birds in the air, till
thou art, by and by, as happy as the angels in heaven, through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.